The Big Beatles Sort Out: The Beatles Cartoon

Hidden deep in The Beatles’ vaults, there is a little-known and frequently overlooked cross-disciplinary multimedia artefact from the height of their mid-sixties international celebrity and creative renown that straddles their transition from loveable moptops into visionary psychedelic expeditionaries and that, for mysterious and never particularly clarified ‘reasons’, they just don’t seem to want you to be able to get hold of. Although that’s enough about Carnival Of Light for now. This was, of course, The Beatles, a series of animated shorts featuring very much Merseybeat-era renditions of John, Paul, George and Ringo dodging legions of frenzied fans whilst caught up in self-consciously silly comedy runarounds loosely inspired by the title of one of their catchy beat discs, not all of which necessarily involved unwitting visits to haunted mansions owned by mad scientists or threats to forcibly marry one of them off to a local dignitary’s daughter. Broadcast by ABC between 1965 and 1967 and probably the first of its kind – so if you ever spent your school holiday mornings chortling along to the escapades of The Osmonds, The Jackson 5ive or indeed New Kids On The Block or Kid’n’Play, you know who to thank – it is not only one of the most vivid representations of the sheer unstoppable force of ‘Beatlemania’ as the hordes of screaming girls the length and breadth of America experienced it, but also essentially where the idea to spin the cartoon Fab Four off into a slightly more critically well regarded big screen submarine odyssey of their own originally began. Also it has a lot of gloriously awful jokes delivered in what can only be described as a disinterested American producer’s idea of another disinterested American producer’s idea of what a ‘scouse’ accent might possibly sound a bit like if nobody was really paying attention.

The Beatles was once a regular sight on television screens on both side of the Atlantic, long after the non-animated Beatles themselves had long since wandered off in the direction of the Mull of Kintyre and whatever a Snookeroo actually is exactly, and considering that every last scrap of already commercially available Beatles material is continually being sold back to us on a repeated basis, you could be forgiven for assuming that there’s a massive DVD box set of the whole lot of them sitting around in huge piles in your local high street entertainment retailer. In fact it quietly disappeared in the very late eighties and has never really been sighted since, granting it the dubious distinction of being the best known least available item of original Beatles material. There are plenty of theories regarding the reasons for its almost complete disappearance, and just as with Carnival Of Light the expected quotient of smug dullards guffawing that it’s ‘best left in the vaults imho’ as if they do not willingly own an officially sanctioned high profile Beatles release with 12-Bar Original on it, but the fact remains that there are many more people out there who either have fond memories of it or would just like to see it out of curiosity, and they can’t.

The Big Beatles Sort Out is a podcast in which Paul and Garry Abbott rank all manner of Beatle-related recordings according to their rigidly enforced and frequently mid-show debated criteria – so far they have tackled the full Beatles catalogue, John, Paul, George and Ringo’s solo singles between 1970 and 1980, The Rutles, songs that the various Beatles gave away to other artists, the films and the BBC sessions, and are currently making their way through every UK chart-topper of the sixties and finding that the likes of Frank Ifield are more than holding their own against the bigger cultural hitters who arrive further on in the decade; well, until the likes of Nancy Sinatra and The Beach Boys decided to up their game a little – and on this special edition I’m joining them for a chat about an episode of The Beatles featuring wacky mayhem inspired by two singles that, coincidentally enough, just missed out on the number one slot. So join us as we discuss just what The Beatles was doing at around ten in the morning on ITV on a schoolday, what 6-Bar Unoriginal might sound like, the latest new animated twist in the ‘Paul McCartney replaced by a lookalike in 1966’ saga, why trumpet-playing buskers only know Moon River, the correct pronunciation of ‘smitheroons’, why everything you know about Penny Lane the actual street is wrong, the capaciousness of Little Ted from Play School‘s pockets, the Cool McCool Expanded Universe, how much of an influence Strawberry Fields Forever might have had on Jamie And The Magic Torch and whether John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls Royce might have been sponsored by Swizzels Matlow, all of it whilst simultaneously trying to look past the frequent deployment of what can only be described as ‘culturally unenlightened’ attitudes. Plus there’s the excitement of finding out what Garry makes of it – and will he find a way to use his never less than controversial scoring system…?

You can listen to The Big Beatles Sort Out: The Beatles Cartoon here.

Buy A Book!

There’s lots more about The Beatles, Cool McCool and tons of other children’s shows that bafflingly found their way into timeslots where children might not necessarily have been watching in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Waterstones here, Amazon here, the Kindle Store here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

You can find an in-depth look at all of the various late-night BBC2 programmes that The Beatles are seen chatting about between takes in Get Back in Keep Left, Swipe Right, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. There is actually a place you can get coffee on Penny Lane, if that helps. Well it’s sort of on Penny Lane, which at least fits geographically with the original lyrics.

Further Listening

You can also find Tim on The Big Beatles Sort Out talking about George Martin’s album By George! here.

You can find Paul on Looks Unfamiliar talking about The Compleat Beatles, Zeeb And The Martians, Crab E. Crab, Rock Lords: Narlies, the Commodore Plus/4 and The Late Night Funster Show here, Disneytime Rotadraw, What Shall We Do Now?: Fun And Games With The Andrex Puppy, Breaking All The Rules, Tomorrow’s World demonstrating Magic Eye pictures, Kirky The HD Hunter, Frog Dreaming and Waddingtons’ The Vampire Game here and the Christmas Special of The Peter Serafinowicz Show here, as well as talking about Transformers on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV here. You can also find Paul on It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Thor: The Dark World here, Iron Fist here and Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 here, as well as talking about

You can also find Garry on It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Fantastic Four here, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer here, Spider-Man 3 here and X-Men here.